1. Field
Apparatuses and methods consistent with exemplary embodiments relate to controlling energy in a Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) system to efficiently save the energy in a building management system.
2. Description of the Related Art
The Internet, which is a human centered connectivity network where humans generate and consume information, is now evolving to the Internet of Things (IoT) where distributed entities, such as things, exchange and process information without human intervention. The Internet of Everything (IoE), which is a combination of the IoT technology and the Big Data processing technology through connection with a cloud server, has emerged. As technology elements, such as “sensing technology”, “wired/wireless communication and network infrastructure”, “service interface technology”, and “Security technology” have been demanded for IoT implementation, a sensor network, a Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communication, Machine Type Communication (MTC), and so forth have been recently researched.
Such an IoT environment may provide intelligent Internet technology services that create a new value to human life by collecting and analyzing data generated among connected things. IoT may be applied to a variety of fields including smart home, smart building, smart city, smart car or connected cars, smart grid, health care, smart appliances and advanced medical services through convergence and combination between existing Information Technology (IT) and various industrial applications.
In general, buildings such as hotels may have an energy control system for effectively controlling the energy. The energy control system may perform occupancy detection (or determine whether a user is present in the room) using a door lock or a motion sensor, and if it is determined that the user is absent from the room, the energy control system may perform setback control based on the results. The term ‘setback control’ as used herein may refer to a control method for temporarily changing the set temperature in order to save energy in a low-energy use time such as night time. The setback control method may immediately start the control upon detecting the absence of the user, or it may wait to start the control until the absence of the user has lasted for a predetermined time after the absence of the user was detected. In the former case, if the user has come back to the room after going out for a short while, the energy consumption may be higher, compared with when the user has stayed in the room. The reason is that when the user has come back to the room quickly, more energy consumption is required compared to the usual because of the instantaneous temperature control. In the latter case, additional energy consumption might occur for the predetermined time before the setback control is initiated after the absence of the user.
In the case of static setback control in which a fixed value is used, when the user has come back to the room from going out, the time required to return the temperature of the room back to the normal temperature may take long, so it may not be possible to provide comfort to the user during that time. Thus, even if the going out time of the user is quite long, it may be inappropriate to turn off the power for energy saving. In addition, it is possible to determine the temperature that can be changed within a predetermined time, for each device, taking into account the degree of aging of devices, and perform dynamic setback control based on the determined temperature. However, since this method does not consider the user's comeback time, its energy efficiency may not be high, and even this method may not provide comfort to the user at the user's comeback time, like the static setback control. Further, even the method of detecting the occupancy (or the presence of the user) using the door lock or the motion sensor is not enough to cover all of the various situations, such as a situation where the motion sensor has a blind spot or a situation where there are multiple users.
The above information is presented as background information only to assist with an understanding of the present disclosure. No determination has been made, and no assertion is made, as to whether any of the above might be applicable as prior art with regard to the present disclosure.